


the war is over (and we are beginning)

by nightswatch



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Angst, Nightmares, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 23:22:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16565063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightswatch/pseuds/nightswatch
Summary: Back on Earth, Keith struggles with what he's been through and Shiro turns out to be rather helpful when Keith can't sleep at night.





	the war is over (and we are beginning)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ronanlynchisneversleepingagain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronanlynchisneversleepingagain/gifts).



> I don't even go here.
> 
> Title from Stars' "In Our Bedroom After The War".

It starts on Earth.

It starts when Keith can’t fall asleep. It starts at one in the morning, it starts because Keith heard the words, “You shouldn’t be out of bed yet,” earlier and chose to ignore them.

He stares at the ceiling of his room for a while, watches shadows dance across the wall and tries in vain to find a comfortable position in his hospital bed. He feels a lot better than only a few days ago, but his ribs ache every time he shifts.

Pidge came by earlier and sat at the end of his bed and told him whatever rumors she’d heard the nurses whisper about, and told him about Lance and Hunk and Shiro.

“He was grumpy, because he didn’t want to be in bed anymore,” Pidge said about Shiro and then moved on to complain that she hasn’t been discharged yet.

Keith almost wanted to ask her more questions about Shiro, because no one’s told him anything. All he knows is that Shiro is alive, and somewhere down the all.

Which is why, around one in the morning, he slips out of bed. He winces at how cold the floor is under his bare feet, but doesn’t make a sound. At least they got him proper pajamas. He’d rather not sneak out of his room with his ass exposed to the world.

Keith tried this earlier, before Pidge showed up. He got out of bed and tried to walk down the hall like he didn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to and was intercepted almost immediately by a concerned nurse who led him back to his room, telling him that he shouldn’t be out of bed and that he needed to be patient with himself. He needed more time to heal.

The problem is that Keith isn’t particularly patient, least of all with himself, so it only took him about 12 hours to disregard the nurse’s orders.

It probably would have taken him less than that if the hallway hadn’t been teeming with people all evening.

He stands in the doorway for a moment, peering up and down the hallway. He can see the Nurses’ Station from here. Two nurses are talking in hushed voices, neither of them looking in his direction. He knows that Shiro is in the room next to Pidge’s, and Pidge’s room is close enough to the Nurses’ Station that she can hear them talking, so Keith will have to turn himself into a shadow to make it all the way down the hall.

After a few careful steps, he ducks behind a cart when something clangs down he hall that has the nurses looking in his direction. The lights in the hallway are dimmed, so he hopefully blends into the shadows. Pain shoots through his torso when he crouches down.

This is stupid.

He just wants to see Shiro and make sure that he’s okay, even though he already knows that Shiro is going to be perfectly fine. He needs to see that with his own two eyes, though.

Keith looks around the cart and slowly makes his way around it. He wishes he had the wolf with him, but they don’t want him in here all the time.

He’s not even close to Shiro’s room when he has to duck into a nook and out of sight, because one of the nurses starts walking down the hall. There’s a door behind him and the sign on the wall tells him that it’s the South Stairwell. It’s a good enough place to hide.

He backs through the door and eases it shut. The lights in the stairwell almost seem too bright. Keith lets out a slow breath and quickly backs away from the window in the door, only to bump into something that is definitely not a wall.

He turns around and finds himself face to face with– “Shiro?”

“What are you doing out of bed?” Shiro asks.

Keith narrows his eyes at him. “What are _you_ doing out of bed?”

Shiro, of course, ignores him and says, “You shouldn’t be… Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Keith says, and ignores how much he actually wants to lie back down. “Are you?”

Shiro nods and it almost looks like he wants to reach out and then changes his mind.

“So,” Keith says, casually, and looks around the stairwell, “what are you doing in here?”

Shiro’s expression turns sheepish. “I just wanted to check on you.”

Keith stares at him. “You…”

“No one’s telling me anything and they said you’d be fine, but I… well, I suppose I wanted to ask you if you’re really fine.”

Keith doesn’t care how much this is going to hurt, he steps forward and wraps his arms around Shiro.

Shiro lets out a huff. “You weren’t trying to sneak out, were you?” he asks.

“What?” Keith pulls away. “No. I was trying to get to your room.”

“Oh.” Shiro looks surprised for a moment, but it quickly melts away into a soft smile. He pulls Keith back against him and holds him a little too tightly for Keith’s ribs’ liking, but that’s all right. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Keith’s fingers involuntary clench in the fabric of Shiro’s shirt. They stand in the brightly lit hallway for a few more minutes, neither of them in a rush to let go of the other, and Keith doesn’t know it yet, but, looking back, maybe this is where everything changed.

*

Keith can’t sleep.

Or, he should say, he has no trouble falling asleep. Not at first. He falls asleep, curled up in the room they assign him at the garrison, and then he dreams.

He dreams of blood and broken bones.

He dreams of space swallowing him whole.

He dreams of screams that echo in his ears even when he’s jerked awake, when he’s lying in bed, clutching his pillow, trying to convince his hammering heart that they’re safe. All of them. Shiro, and Pidge, and Hunk, Lance, Allura, and Coran, his mother, the wolf, everyone.

They’re safe, but after a dream like that he can’t bring himself to close his eyes again, not for a while. Sometimes he stays awake until his alarm starts to ring and he drags himself out of bed, dark circles under his eyes. Sometimes the wolf will sleep next to his bed and Keith reaches down to stroke his soft fur, but sometimes the wolf is off doing his own thing and then it’s just Keith and the darkness and his thoughts.

They help rebuild, help get rid of the remnants of the Galra’s rule.

Keith makes it through a few days without much sleep, then he falls asleep during a lunch break, leaning against the paw of the black lion.

“Keith?”

“Hm…”

“Hey.”

Keith blinks. He’s still holding a half-eaten sandwich and Pidge is looking down at him with concern in her eyes.

“Sorry,” Keith says and wraps up the rest of his sandwich. “Time to get back to work, huh?”

“You okay?” Pidge asks.

“Yeah, sure.”

“If you don’t feel–”

“I’m okay,” Keith says and gets up before Pidge can ask him again. He knows that everyone would understand if he needed a break and wanted to head back to the garrison early, but he’d feel like he was letting everyone down, so he forces himself to stick around for a few more hours.

He skips dinner that evening and goes right back to his room, the wolf following at his heels. Keith is grateful for the company. He changes into his pajamas, even though he still can’t quite believe that he won’t have to jump out of bed and into the black lion in the middle of the night.

Kosmo watches him as he curls up in bed. It’s way too early to go to sleep, but Keith is too exhausted to care. He tries not to think of the nightmares as he closes his eyes.

Maybe today he won’t dream.

But he does.

He does and something is pulling him into the darkness and there’s nothing he can do about it, and there’s no one there to save him. Part of him knows that he’s dreaming, and that part of him just wants to wake up, but he’s trapped and–

Someone’s knocking on his door andpulls him out of the dream.

Keith sucks in a deep breath as he jerks awake. His alarm clock tells him that it’s only 8:30. He’s alone in his room now. It doesn’t bother him that Kosmo comes and goes whenever he wants. He’s not a pet; he doesn’t belong to Keith, except maybe in a way he does. Still. Nobody owns that wolf.

Another knock.

Keith isn’t sure if he can open the door and act like everything’s fine.

“Keith?”

It’s Shiro.

“You in there?”

Keith flicks on the light, gets up slowly and opens the door for Shiro. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

Shiro frowns at him. “You weren’t at dinner.”

“I was tired.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

Keith shrugs. “I was just tired.” It’s not a lie. He was tired enough to go to bed before eight o’clock.

Shiro glances up and down the hall and leans closer to him. “Can I come in?”

Keith steps out of his way and lets him in.

Shiro pushes the door shut and leans against it, like he wants to keep Keith from running away. He clears his throat. “Pidge said you fell asleep during lunch break earlier?”

Keith doesn’t reply, he only stares back at Shiro, defiant. So he fell asleep. He’s probably not the first person that has happened to.

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Shiro asks.

“Sure.” Keith wishes that had sounded more convincing. He doesn’t even believe himself.

“Keith,” Shiro says, and it’s not stern, it’s soft, worried.

“Maybe I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Shiro’s expression stays carefully neutral when he asks, “Why?”

Keith doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to unload this on Shiro, because he’s been through enough already. He’s been through more than Keith can even imagine. Keith should be able to deal with this on his own. “I’m fine,” he says.

“I can go if you want me to…” Shiro says.

What that really is, though, is an offer that he’ll stay and listen if there’s anything Keith needs to say. Keith sighs and shakes his head. “It’s just…”

“Yeah?”

“I keep dreaming about it.”

“About what?”

Keith laughs, even though none of this is funny. “ _Everything_. It’s like… now that we’re here and it’s over and we’re okay, I suddenly… I can’t shut it out anymore.”

He’s too surprised to react when Shiro reaches for him, he just lets him pull him into a gentle hug. “I know,” Shiro only says and slowly pushes him over to his bed. “Here, I’ll…” He sits down at the end of Keith’s bed, waiting for Keith to catch up to what’s going on here and realize that Shiro is waiting for him to climb back into bed.

“You must have something better to do,” Keith says.

Shiro leans back against the wall and shakes his head. “I don’t.”

He’s probably lying, but Keith doesn’t care. He doesn’t actually want him to go. Keith looks at Shiro, who’s looking back at him, head tipped back against the wall.

“It’s okay,” Shiro says.

Keith doesn’t know what he means. Is it okay that he has bad dreams? Is it okay that Shiro has to sit there and watch over him so he’ll be able to go to sleep? He doesn’t ask, he just accepts it, whatever its exact meaning was.

Keith draws in a deep breath. “Do you ever…”

“I don’t usually dream about it,” Shiro says. There’s a small pause before he continues, “But sometimes I… Yesterday Lance dropped a plate and for a second I thought we were being attacked.”

Keith wants to say something, but he can’t think of anything, so he settles for, “Thank you.” Shiro has already done way too much for him, but he doesn’t have it in himself to feel guilty right now.

“Go to sleep, Keith.”

Keith nods, but he can’t stop looking at Shiro, not as long as Shiro is still looking back at him. Shiro shifts, his eyes still on Keith, like he’s waiting for him to protest, and then carefully lies down next to him when he doesn’t.

“Keith,” Shiro whispers, “sleep.”

Keith closes his eyes. There are a few inches between them, but he can feel Shiro’s warmth.

“It’s okay,” Shiro says one more time.

Keith still doesn’t know what he means, but that’s okay, too.

He still dreams that night, but when he wakes up, panting, Shiro’s arm is around him within a second, holding him until he feels like he can breathe evenly again. Shiro then lets go, but when Keith’s alarm goes off in the morning, Shiro is still there, blinking at him sleepily.

“Did you sleep?” Shiro asks.

Keith nods.

“Good,” Shiro mumbles and climbs out of bed.

“Thank you,” Keith says, he tries his hardest not to be embarrassed about this, but he still can’t quite bring himself to look Shiro in the eyes.

Shiro is quiet for a moment, then he says, “Don’t skip breakfast, okay?”

“I won’t,” Keith says quietly. 

*

Now that Keith has actually managed to get a full night of sleep, the following day goes a lot better for him.

He doesn’t fall asleep during their lunch break. He watches Pidge throw a ball they found in the rubble for Kosmo, and Keith isn’t sure if Kosmo is actually enjoying himself or if he’s just humoring Pidge, but he goes and retrieves the ball for her a few times, zapping back and forth.

Pidge scratches the wolf’s ears before they go back to work.

The day goes by quickly, and today, Keith doesn’t skip dinner. He sits with the other paladins and listens to Hunk and Lance squabble about dessert.

Shiro isn’t there.

Keith isn’t exactly surprised, because Shiro doesn’t technically work with them anymore and gets sent wherever he’s needed. He’s mostly been involved with the Atlas mission, so sometimes he’ll be in a meeting room or down in in the hangar until late at night. Which is… Well, it is what it is.

Today it makes Keith nervous that Shiro isn’t with them.

He thinks about curling up in bed on his own later, about waking up again at night, about the darkness that’ll pull him back in. He’ll wake up on his own, shaking, and he’ll have to force himself to go back to sleep somehow. What was he expecting, really? That Shiro would watch over him every night?

That’s not a solution to this problem.

He could talk to someone. That was one of the things they told him when he got discharged from the hospital – “We have people you can talk to, Keith. If you ever feel like you need someone to speak to, we’ll be happy to set up an appointment for you.” Keith ignored that and told himself that he’d be fine. He might have been wrong about that, but how is talking about it going to fix this?

“Earth to Keith?”

“What?”

“You’ve been staring at your stew for like five minutes,” Hunk says. “Do you hate it? Do you want me to take care of it for you?”

Keith pushes it over to him, not sure if he’s actually not hungry or if he’s anxious about what’s going to happen when he closes his eyes tonight.

“Oh, look, it’s Shiro!”

Keith looks around to find Shiro strutting towards them. He pulls up a chair next to Keith and nods at his tray. “They had fresh rolls.” He gives Keith a nudge. “You want one? You like the rolls, right?”

Keith eyes them. He loves those rolls and they were out when he was getting dinner. He also does sort of regret giving his stew to Hunk, so his stomach is definitely interested.

“Here,” Shiro says and hands one to him.

Keith takes it, almost on autopilot, and starts gnawing at it. Shiro shoots him a look here and there and eventually hands him another roll.

Everyone’s in a good mood after dinner and they gather in the common room for a game of cards. Keith plays a few rounds, but Pidge and Hunk eventually move on to a video game tournament that Keith has no interest in and Lance sneaks away, not as inconspicuously as he probably hopes.

“I’m going to bed,” Keith mutters. He leaves and nods at Shiro on his way out the door.

Shiro catches up with him in the hallway a moment later.

Keith raises his eyebrows at him.

“Just making sure you’re okay,” Shiro says, his voice low.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Keith asks, like Shiro didn’t literally have to climb into bed with him last night to make sure he’d be able to get some sleep.

Shiro’s lips twitch, almost like this is somehow amusing.

They walk to Keith’s room in silence and once they’ve made it to the door, Shiro stops in his tracks, looking at Keith.

“Good… night?” Keith says.

Shiro nods, but he doesn’t move, and it takes Keith a moment to realize that this is an offer. Shiro will stay if Keith wants him to. _Needs_ him to.

In all honesty, Keith isn’t sure what he needs. Maybe he needs to learn how to sleep on his own. Maybe he doesn’t have to learn how to deal with it tonight, though.

“Really?” Keith asks.

Shiro nods.

Keith nods at Shiro’s clothes. “You wanna, uh…”

“Oh,” Shiro says, glancing down the hall. “Yeah, I’ll… I’ll be right back.”

Keith leaves the door unlocked for Shiro and gets ready for bed. When he comes out of the bathroom, the wolf is waiting for him and Keith sits on the floor with him to pet him for a while.

“Where have you been?” Keith mumbles to him.

“He sometimes sleeps in the black lion.”

Keith looks up to find Shiro hovering in the doorway. “He does?”

“Yeah, and, uh… apparently he’s also spending some time with Pidge at night.”

The wolf knocks his nose against Keith’s hand.

“Just making sure she’s all right, I think,” Shiro says and pushes the door shut.

Keith scratches the wolf’s head. “Thank you.” He stands up and looks at Shiro. “This is… Just tonight. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t… you shouldn’t–”

“If this helps,” Shiro says, and sits down at the end of Keith’s bed, “then I’m happy to stay. You’ve been through a lot, Keith. We all have.”

“Exactly, so why am I the only one–”

“People deal with things differently,” Shiro says.

Keith sighs. He wants to deal with this differently, but he climbs into bed anyway and doesn’t say a word when Shiro lies down next to him. Keith makes sure that there’s enough space between them, but when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he’s tucked against Shiro and Shiro is holding him tightly.

In the morning, Shiro climbs out of bed just a few seconds before Keith’s alarm starts ringing.

“Don’t skip breakfast,” Shiro says.

This time, Keith only rolls his eyes at him.

*

Keith doesn’t know what to do with his day off.

He’s well aware that he technically needs a day off, that he needs some rest, some time to recharge, but he still wakes up at six and climbs out of bed. Shiro isn’t there.

Keith went to bed on his own last night – Shiro has been busy for the past couple of days and Keith has barely seen him. So he’s back to not sleeping.

Last night was already off to a bad start before Keith even went to bed. They had a meeting before dinner, and after dinner his mom found him and pulled him aside. She’s leaving tomorrow with Kolivan on a mission she couldn’t even tell Keith anything abut.

Part of Keith knew that they weren’t going to leave Earth together, but he liked having family around. Now it’ll just be him, and even though it was just him after his dad’s death, too, he got weirdly used to not being alone anymore. Not that he’ll actually be alone. He’ll still have his friends. They’re his family too, in a way. But it’s not the same.

He has breakfast with his mom on his day off, because he knows that she’ll be busy all day, preparing for her departure the next day. Once she’s left him to spend some time with his friends, Keith wanders about on his own, not quite sure what to do with himself.

He wants to be alone, but he also doesn’t want to be alone.

Maybe he could go out to their old house. See what’s left of it. He’s not sure if he wants to see how badly it’s destroyed, though.

It’s funny how he can walk through the building without anyone questioning what he’s doing or wether or not he’s allowed to be here. Everyone knows who he is, everyone nods at him in passing. Keith tries not to look like he’s a little bit lost today.

He ends up on the roof. He stays there for a little while, stares up at the cloudy sky and wonders when he’s going back up there.

The wolf joins him for some time, tail curled around Keith. And they stare at the sky together. Maybe Kosmo misses his home, maybe he wants to go back, and maybe he can’t wait for them to leave this place. Kosmo eventually nudges him and then disappears, and after that Keith doesn’t stick around much longer.

On his way back back down the stairs, he walks smack-dab into Shiro.

“Oh,” Shiro says. “Sorry.”

“I wasn’t looking.”

“What are you up to?”

Keith shrugs.

“You wanna go downstairs?”

“Sparring?” Keith asks.

“If you want?”

“If you’re ready to get your ass kicked,” Keith says with a grin.

Shiro raises his eyebrows at him. “We’ll see about that.”

They have one of the rooms downstairs to themselves and they start out with staffs as always. They haven’t had much time for this recently, but Keith has come down here to practice on his own.

Keith likes how it pulls him in, how it makes him focus on only this, on Shiro, blocking and attacking, again and again, until Shiro knocks the staff out of his hands for the first time.

“Focus,” Shiro says.

Keith wipes his hair out of his face. “Hey, I thought this was just for fun.”

Shiro smirks at him as Keith picks up his staff. They go for another round and this time Keith loses his staff even faster.

Shiro frowns at him.

Maybe Keith really isn’t as focused as he should be. “My mom is leaving tomorrow,” he says as way of explanation.

“I’ve heard.”

Keith picks up his staff, ready to keep going.

“Why aren’t you spending the day with her?” Shiro asks.

“She’s busy.”

“Is she?”

Maybe she isn’t busy anymore, but now Keith isn’t sure if he actually wants to spend time with her, because he feels like that’s only going to make him miss her more. He doesn’t like any of this. He doesn’t like that she can’t tell him where he’s going and that he has no idea when he’ll see her again.

“Keith,” Shiro says, “You should go and–”

“I will,” Keith mutters and holds up his staff. “One more round, okay?”

“Okay.”

This time Keith tries a little harder, pushes Shiro harder, too, and it almost seems like Shiro is struggling to keep up with him here and there. Eventually, Keith knocks away Shiro’s staff and then swipes him clean off his feet.

Shiro lets out a soft _oof_ as he hits the padded floor.

“Sorry,” Keith says. “Had to.” He holds out his hand to Shiro to help him up. “Here…”

Shiro takes his hand, but instead of letting Keith help him up, he gives Keith a pull and he loses his balance. He topples right over and lands on top of Shiro.

Shiro laughs. “ _Sorry_.”

Keith sits up on all fours, glaring down at Shiro, who’s still flat on his back, eyes crinkled with a smile. “You’re having way too much fun.”

“I thought this _was_ for fun,” Shiro says.

Keith huffs at him, but it’s actually nice to see Shiro like this. Almost relaxed. With a smile on his face. Keith doesn’t even notice that he’s spending an awkwardly long time staring at that smile.

He snaps out of it when Shiro clears his throat.

“Yeah, I should…” Keith scrambles off of him and picks up both their staffs. “I’ll see you… tomorrow.”

*

Keith’s mom leaves the following day at 7:23 PM. He hugs her goodbye and she tells him that they’ll see each other soon, and she tells him to look out for his friends, and to look out for himself, and when he lets go of her and he’s escorted away to her ship, he feels almost as lost as he did the day his dad died.

After takeoff, he watches the darkening sky from the terrace until he can’t see the ship anymore, the wolf silently watching with him.

“Are you wishing you were on that ship?” Keith asks. He almost wishes he was on that ship and he can’t even tell why. Maybe it’s because only part of him really belongs on Earth, maybe it’s because he misses the vastness of the universe. Maybe he wonders if being out there would take away the nightmares that come to haunt him on Earth.

Keith goes to bed early, curls up in bed and falls asleep with the wolf curled up next to his bed. Keith’s hand is still buried in Kosmo’s soft fur when he drifts off.

When he jerks awake maybe an hour later, the wolf is gone and Keith is shaking. Before he can even think about what the hell he’s doing, Keith has gotten out of bed and his feet have carried him out the door and down the hall. He stops in front of Shiro’s door, staring at the small strip of light at the bottom.

Shiro’s probably still awake, or he fell asleep with the lights on.

Either way, Keith isn’t sure if he actually wants to knock. This is ridiculous. He’s a grown ass man. He shouldn’t need this.

He almost walks away.

Almost.

Then he thinks of Shiro, warm next to him in bed, holding him close until he’s fallen back asleep.

Keith knocks.

If Shiro is asleep and doesn’t hear him, he’ll just go back to his own room and deal with it in whatever way he can. But Shiro does hear him, and he looks wide awake when he opens the door for him.

“Keith?”

“Hey.”

“Everything okay?”

“I… Yeah.” Keith think maybe he can backpedal and leave, because that’s clearly what he should do. “Sorry.”

“Come in,” Shiro says, even though Keith is trying to look like everything’s perfectly fine and he just sleepwalked to Shiro’s room entirely by accident. Shiro opens the door a little wider and ushers Keith inside.

Keith hasn’t been in Shiro’s room since they returned to Earth. It practically looks like all their rooms looked the day they moved in.

Shiro doesn’t comment on Keith who’s standing in his bedroom in pajamas and slippers, and simply tucks a bookmark into whatever book he has lying on his desk and flips a file shut before he turns around to face Keith. He takes one look at Keith and says, “Can’t sleep?”

Well, at this point Keith can probably just admit it. He nods.

“Have you been sleeping?” Shiro asks tentatively.

“Sure,” Keith says. It’s not a lie, he does get enough sleep to keep him going.

Shiro sighs at him.

“I’m fine.”

Shiro shoots him a pointed glance. “Your mom left today.”

Keith nods. “This has nothing to do with her.”

“Really?”

“Fine, so maybe it bugs me that they wouldn’t tell me where she’s going.”

“Some missions–”

“I _know_ ,” Keith says. He’s here to be annoyed, not for Shiro to explain the world to him. He needs someone who’s on his side right now.

Shiro seems to get that, too, because after a moment he reaches out to Keith and gives his shoulder a squeeze. “I’m sure she’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Keith…”

Keith doesn’t know why he’s so shaken up about this. They went on missions together for the Blade of Marmora. They could have gotten killed at any point. Why didn’t he feel like this back then?

Because he was with her, that’s why.

Shiro doesn’t try to say anything else, he just pulls Keith closer and Keith wraps his arms around him without a second thought.

“What can I do?” Shiro asks.

Keith pulls away and looks up at him. No one can do anything; Keith just needs to get a grip. Shiro looks back at him, steady, calculating, like he’s trying to figure it out all for him. Keith gets caught up in it. Shiro’s fingers are still wrapped around his arm, and Keith’s hand has somehow ended up splayed against Shiro’s chest. They’re barely touching and it still feels like it’s too much, but at the same time Keith wants to be even closer to Shiro.

He leans in and somehow Shiro meets him halfway. Of all the stupid and impulsive things he’s ever done in his life, kissing Shiro might be the most stupid and most impulsive. He almost expects Shiro to push him away, but he only wraps his arms around Keith and for a moment Keith doesn’t think, doesn’t feel anything except for Shiro’s lips on his and Shiro’s hair between his fingers.

Keith doesn’t know how to stop kissing Shiro, so he keeps going as long as Shiro will let him, until his legs are starting to feel wobbly, until he feels dizzy.

Shiro lets him pull away, and Keith doesn’t like the look on his face. “We shouldn’t have–”

“No, wait,” Keith interrupts. “It’s fine. I’m not… I don’t have any expectations, okay? I just…” He needed this. He didn’t even know how much. “Can I stay?”

“Stay?” Shiro echoes. He knows what Keith is asking.

Keith wants to spend the night, he wants to keep kissing Shiro, he wants to do whatever will make him forget the day he’s head, he wants Shiro closer and he doesn’t want to think about tomorrow. Keith looks up at him. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

It doesn’t take Shiro long to make up his mind. “All right,” he says and wraps his arms back around Keith. “Stay.”

*

“Time to get up.”

“Maybe it’s time for _you_ to get up,” Keith mutters into his pillow.

Gentle fingers run down his spine. “Right. They don’t need you until nine, huh?”

Keith hums and rolls onto his back, rubbing his eyes. Shiro is already sitting up, picking his shirt off the floor. Keith glares at his alarm clock. “It’s not even five yet. What is wrong with you?”

“What if someone notices that I sneak out of your room pretty much every morning?”

Keith honestly isn’t capable of caring about that this early in the morning. “We’re both adults. Who cares?”

Shiro hums and doesn’t argue. “I’ll see you at the meeting in the afternoon.”

They do see each other in the afternoon, but they barely talk. The meeting is mostly about how the repairs on the Atlas are coming along. It looks like they’ll be able to take it for a test run soon.

Shiro follows them to the cafeteria for dinner, animatedly talking to Pidge. He occasionally glances at Keith, but Keith doesn’t have much to say tonight, so he mainly stays at the sidelines and listens to everyone else’s conversations.

He goes back to his room on his own that evening, but that’s nothing special. He always does. Shiro usually shows up later.

It’s a soft knock on the door, and a quiet, “Come in,” and then Shiro slips into Keith’s room and most of the time he sits on Keith’s bed and waits for Keith to join him. Or, like tonight, Keith is in bed already and Shiro lies down next to him.

“Hey,” Shiro says.

Keith doesn’t say _hey_ , he just leans in to kiss Shiro. He likes what they have. It’s not complicated. They don’t have rules. They’ve been sneaking into each other’s rooms for a week now and it works well enough that Keith doesn’t want to change anything about it.

Shiro is on top of him and just kisses him for a while, until Keith gets impatient and starts pulling at Shiro’s shirt. Shiro smiles, his own fingers busy slipping under the hem of Keith’s shirt. Keith sometimes wants to ask him if it feels the same to Shiro, or if makes a difference when he touches Keith with his left or his right hand.

Keith doesn’t ask. Once they start kissing, there’s usually no room for a conversation, and when they lie next to each other later, tangled in the sheets, Keith closes his eyes and goes to sleep, with Shiro still next to him, because part of him is always afraid that Shiro is going to leave.

But Shiro usually stays. Not always until Keith wakes up in the morning, but sometimes he’ll dream and he’ll wake up shaking, trying to remember where he is, that he’s safe, and then Shiro will still be there and Keith can go back to sleep.

It’s the same tonight. It’s the same the night after that.

They keep doing this for another week and it’s still enough, and it ensures that Keith can sleep at night, but he starts to feel himself getting restless. One evening after dinner – it’s just him and Pidge today – Keith wanders around aimlessly for a while until his feet carry him downstairs and he borrows a pod to take it out into the desert. He wants to see the stars tonight and the garrison’s lights are too bright.

He’s barely sat down on the dusty ground when the wolf appears next to him. Keith reaches out to scratch his head and they look up at the sky together for a while. It’s still blue and cloudless, but the stars will appear soon enough. Another half hour maybe. He wants to be back out there, even though he knows that the people on Earth still need them, even though he doesn’t know where Voltron would take them next or when they’d be able to come back here.

The wolf hears the pod that approaches them first. When his ears twitch, Keith looks over his shoulder and he’d almost bet that it’s Shiro. It’s late; he was probably looking for Keith at the garrison.

It is indeed Shiro who hops out of the pod and joins him on the ground a moment later.

Keith shoots him an inquiring look.

“You weren’t in your room,” Shiro says.

Keith hums.

“You wanna be alone?”

“No.” Keith leans closer to Shiro so their arms are touching, just the slightest bit. The sun is starting to set and Keith almost wants to curl against Shiro and watch as the sky turns pink and orange and a deep, dark blue. He came out here to see the stars after all. “Shiro…”

“Yes?”

“I…” Keith shakes his head. Telling Shiro that he feels trapped here isn’t going to help. Shiro might not even understand; he’ll tell him that they have a job here and that they can’t leave until it’s done. Keith gets that, too.

Shiro, eyes on the horizon, puts his hand on Keith’s back. “Do you feel like part of you belongs out there?”

“I don’t know,” Keith says. Maybe that’s why he feels like this.

Keith can feel the warmth of Shiro’s palm on his back and he doesn’t keep himself from leaning into that warmth any longer. He feels Shiro’s fingers twitch on his back, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Not a good place to fall asleep,” Shiro mutters.

“I won’t,” Keith promises. He just wants to sit here, just for a little while. It’s so quiet out here that for a moment it seems like they’re the only people in the world. The wolf is lying next to them, waiting patiently for Keith to move, but he can’t bring himself to get up and go back to the garrison yet.

It’s starting to get cooler as night falls and someone will come looking for them if they stay out here for too long, but Keith isn’t sure if he can pull himself out of this moment. There has been so much weighing on him and right now he can finally breathe and close his eyes and feel absolutely relaxed.

Shiro doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move away, doesn’t get restless. He sits with Keith until he’s ready to head back.

Keith nods at their both their pods. “I’ll see you–”

“Tomorrow,” Shiro says and it almost sounds like a question, but Keith knows that it’s not supposed to be.

He nods, even though he wouldn’t have minded curling up in bed with Shiro tonight even if nothing else happened between them. They get back to the garrison almost at the same time and they part ways in the hallway.

Tonight, the wolf follows Keith up to his room and lies down by his bed before Keith has even stripped off his clothes. Before he slips into bed, Keith gives him a gentle pat to thank him for staying.

*

Shiro doesn’t come to his room the next evening. He’s not at dinner either, so there must be something else going on. Keith isn’t worried. Sometimes things just come up and they don’t see each other all day.

Keith decides to work out that evening and passes out pretty much immediately when he goes to bed. He does wake up in the middle of the night and he’s alone in his bed and it’s cold in his room. He pulls the sheets up all the way to his chin and forces himself to close his eyes again. He can deal with this on his own, he doesn’t _need_ Shiro. Having Shiro with him just makes things easier, but, in the end, Shiro can’t fix this for him.

In the morning, Shiro is at breakfast, and as they all head down to the lions afterwards Keith tries to ask him what was going on last night – there might be something happening with the Atlas – but Shiro only tells him that he has a meeting to get to and hurries away.

Keith barely sees him for the next two days and Pidge tells them that the Atlas is almost ready to go, so that’s likely how Shiro was spending all his time, but Keith still can’t shake the feeling that he did something wrong.

He tries not to worry about it and goes about his day as he usually would, but that night he can’t fall asleep for ages, even with the wolf sleeping next to his bed, his breathing soft. Keith stares into the darkness of his room for at least an hour before he finally falls asleep, and he wakes up again not much later, drenched in sweat, shaking, from a nightmare that seemed much too vivid.

Keith takes a deep breath and finds himself another shirt. The wolf isn’t there anymore and Keith has trouble convincing himself to lie back down. His heart is still hammering in his chest and it seems to him that as soon as he closes his eyes he’ll get pulled back into that nightmare.

Another deep breath, but it doesn’t help. It’s not terribly late yet. Just a few minutes past eleven. Keith slips into his shoes and peers out the door.

There’s no one in the hallway, so Keith quickly leaves his room and goes down the hallway, to the left, and knocks on Shiro’s door. There’s still a small strip of light under the door, so chances are that he’s still awake.

The door opens almost immediately and Shiro doesn’t even look surprised. A little annoyed maybe. Keith takes a step back. “Sorry, I can leave.”

Shiro sighs and pulls him into his room. “What’s wrong?” he asks as soon as the door is shut.

“Nothing, I…” Keith tugs his fingers through his hair. He’ll never stop being embarrassed about this. “I should go.”

“Keith…”

“I just… couldn’t sleep and…” And he didn’t want to be alone, but he can’t bring himself to say that because it shouldn’t even be an issue.

Shiro nudges him towards his bed. “Okay.”

Keith doesn’t ask him if he’s sure and he doesn’t protest and he doesn’t change his mind, because he’s about ready to collapse, so he crawls into Shiro’s bed and curls up on his side and Shiro turns off the light at his desk. Maybe he was reading something – Keith is too exhausted to care or to ask.

Shiro scoots into bed behind him and wraps his arm around him. He doesn’t say a word, he just holds Keith and this isn’t what they used to do. In the beginning, when Shiro stayed with him because he couldn’t sleep, he would keep his distance. And when it turned into more, they fell asleep in the same bed all the time, but Shiro never held him like this.

That somehow makes it worse.

Keith tries to breathe evenly, tries to go back to sleep, but he can’t.

“Keith?”

“I lost you,” Keith says. It happens all the time, and it’s not just Shiro, but most nights it is. “I keep losing you.”

Shiro is quiet for a moment, then he says, “I’m right here.”

“I know.” That’s not the point, though, and Shiro probably knows that.

Shiro nuzzles into his hair. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I meant… I wasn’t around much these past few days.” A pause, then he adds, “I’m sorry if you needed me and I wasn’t there.”

Keith wants to say that it’s okay, because Shiro doesn’t owe him anything, but maybe it’s not really okay, maybe _he’s_ not really okay, and maybe he needed Shiro. He turns around, and buries his face in Shiro’s shirt.

Shiro is very still for a moment but eventually starts running his fingers through Keith’s hair and that’s how Keith finally falls asleep, tucked against Shiro, holding on to him tightly, with Shiro’s fingers still carding through his hair.

*

When Keith wakes up, Shiro is already awake. He’s scooted away during the night and is watching Keith now, still looking soft and tired. Keith smiles and stretches and nudges Shiro, who lets out a quiet huff.

“Why’re you still in bed?” Keith asks.

Shiro usually gets up before him, and most of the time Keith wakes up when Shiro climbs out of bed. “I just… I guess I’m tired this morning.”

Keith hums and reaches for him, fingers running up his chest, to his neck, where they linger for a moment before they travel back down again.

Shiro’s eyelids flutter. “Keith…”

“We have time, right?” Keith says and pulls at the waistband of Shiro’s pajama pants.

Shiro nods and rolls onto his back when Keith sits up to straddle his hips. It somehow feels different in the morning. It’s slower and gentler and Keith takes his time getting Shiro out of his clothes before he pulls off his own. He finds himself lingering, lips pressed to Shiro’s neck, drawing it out as long as he can. Keith can feel Shiro shiver just the tiniest bit under his fingertips as they brush over small scars from battles in the past and over little bruises that training left behind not too long ago.

Keith works his way down and Shiro moans softly when Keith’s teeth scrape against his collarbone. Keith knows that he doesn’t have time to kiss every inch of Shiro’s body, but he wants to, he wants to take the time to explore, because all the times before we rushed, just to take the edge off, just a means to an end.

It didn’t mean anything.

This is different.

And Keith isn’t sure why, but suddenly he’s terrified that he’ll lose this. Not just Shiro, but all of this. All they have right now. This strange, slow morning. He wants to be allowed to touch Shiro like this all the time, he wants to be with him, and curl up in bed with him. He wants this so much. This, all of this.

“Keith,” Shiro says, breathless, needy.

Keith stills and looks up and Shiro is looking back at him, and there is something to be said about Shiro in the early morning light, about the way his eyes look so much brighter, about the quirk to his mouth. Keith wants to say too many things right now, too many things he shouldn’t say, so he leans down and kisses Shiro to keep his mouth busy as Shiro’s fingers trail down his spine.

Slowly, Keith grinds down against Shiro, drawing a groan from both of them. His skin feels like it’s on fire in the places where Shiro is touching him and he wants more, but he also doesn’t want it to end, so he keeps at the torturously slow pace and commits the noises Shiro makes to memory.

It’s too much and it’s not enough at the same time. Shiro tugs at his hair, maybe to tell him to pick up the pace, but Keith loves how needy Shiro sounds right now, how absolutely wrecked he looks, his cheeks flushed, strands of hair sticking to his forehead as Keith keeps grinding down against him.

He loves that Shiro is letting him do this, and he loves that Shiro looks like this because of him.

Keith eventually can’t draw it out any longer and reaches between them to jerk them both off and Keith just slumps on top of Shiro afterwards and gives himself a moment to catch his breath. Shiro’s fingers are curled around the back of his neck, thumb lazily running up and down.

“I…” Shiro starts.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

Shiro stays completely still until Keith moves and glances at the alarm clock next to Shiro’s bed. “Crap.”

Shiro follows his gaze and sighs. “You go take a shower, I still have about fifteen minutes. You’re already fifteen minutes late.”

Keith stumbles out of bed and takes the quickest shower of all time in Shiro’s bathroom. Shiro is already waiting when Keith comes back out and starts picking up the clothes he was wearing last night. He’ll have to swing by his room and get something he can show up downstairs with.

“Come by later?” Keith says before he leaves.

“I’m not sure if…”

“I don’t care if it’s late.”

Shiro nods, clearly admitting defeat. “I’ll come by.”

“Okay,” Keith says and makes a run for it.

*

“What happened to your hair?”

“Nothing,” Keith grumbles. “I overslept, I’m sorry, okay?”

Allura raises an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t otherwise comment. “Can we get started?”

They all make their way to their lions and Lance gives Keith a pat on the back. “Overslept, huh?”

“So?”

Lance only grins and Keith sincerely hopes that Lance will let this go and not throw innuendos at him all day.

The wolf joins them on the way and Keith reaches out to greet him with a pat. “There you are…”

“That’s a good wolfie,” Hunk says and stops for a moment to kneel down and pet him properly. “Yeah… so good… aw.”

Keith clears his throat.

“What? He deserves some love.” Hunk stands up and they get going again. “He sometimes comes to my room in the middle of the night to check on me. Scared the crap out of me the first time it happened, but yeah… sometimes I’ll wake up at night and he’ll be there.”

Allura nods. “He checks up on everyone.”

Keith is glad that everyone’s so distracted cooing at the wolf that they don’t really comment on him being half an hour late anymore. He catches himself getting distracted pretty much all day, his thoughts wandering back to Shiro. He’s pretty sure that no one really notices, and only Lance wiggles his eyebrows at him when Keith leaves straight after dinner and heads back to his room. The wolf stays with the others, his head in Pidge’s lap.

And obviously Shiro won’t show up for a while, he wasn’t even around for dinner, but Keith waits in his room, just in case.

It’s almost ten when there’s finally a knock on his door and Keith finds Shiro in the hallway once he opens it.

“I can’t stay,” Shiro says, voice low as he steps into Keith’s room.

“Why, what’s going on?”

“Nothing, I just… I have to take care of something.”

“What?”

“Keith.”

Keith folds his arms across his chest. “Just tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. “This was a bad idea.”

“What was a bad idea?”

“This… us. It was… I’m sorry, Keith. I should have known better and now it’s just… We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Wait a second,” Keith says. “Where is this coming from all of a sudden? This morning–”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry and explain this to me. What happened? Did someone find out?”

“No one found out,” Shiro says.

“So what’s going on?”

Shiro presses his lips together and sits down on Keith’s bed with a sigh. “I shouldn’t tell you about this.”

Keith raises his eyebrows in question.

“We’ve been picking up some signals,” Shiro says. “They might be distress signals, but they’re not consistent and–”

“And why are we not–”

“Keith,” Shiro says and takes Keith’s hand, “we’re trying to figure out what’s going on, because we don’t want you to just take off and run straight into a trap.”

“For how long have you known?”

“About two days,” Shiro says.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I had orders.” Shiro tugs at Keith’s hand. “Come on, sit down.”

Keith doesn’t sit down.

“They’ll probably send you to investigate within the next week. Be patient. And don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

“I…” Keith shakes his head. “What do you mean, they’ll send us? What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro says.

“You’re coming with us. On the Atlas.”

“Keith… I don’t know.”

“But…” Keith shakes his head. All this time he thought that when they’d go back out there, they’d go together. He does sit down now and leans against Shiro. “So we’ll be out there and you’ll be here?”

“They haven’t told me anything yet,” Shiro says. “There’s a chance that they’ll let me fly the Atlas, but nothing’s confirmed.”

“I’m not going without you,” Keith says.

“That’s not your decision to make.”

Keith is well aware of that, but he’s piloting the black lion and he should have at least some say in who’s coming with them. He hates the thought of leaving Earth and leaving Shiro behind. Considering all the things that might happen to them out there, Keith wouldn’t even be sure when he’d see Shiro again, and what would change while he was gone. He reaches out to take Shiro’s hand again.

“Keith, even if I come with you, I don’t think this thing between us–”

“Stop.”

“We have to talk about it at some point.”

“Not tonight.”

Shiro shakes his head at him ever so slightly.

“Can you just stay?” Keith asks. He’s feeling sullen and defiant and he doesn’t like how any of this is developing.

“I’ll stay for ten minutes,” Shiro says. “I have to go back down.”

“Can I go with you?”

“Remember when I told you that you’re not supposed to know about this?” Shiro mutters.

“Fine,” Keith says. He sits back and pulls Shiro with him and Shiro lets out a confused noise, but eventually settles against Keith’s chest. It feels strange at first, but after a bit of shifting, Shiro actually looks like he’s comfortable, so Keith closes his eyes and keeps his arms wrapped around Shiro.

He doesn’t fall asleep. There’s too much going on in his head and he doesn’t want to miss a second of Shiro being here with him.

“Shiro,” Keith says after a while.

Shiro clears his throat. “Yeah?”

“You…” Keith glares at the ceiling. He said that this thing between them didn’t have to mean anything, but… it just didn’t turn out like that for him. It turned into _something_ and now he doesn’t know what to do. “Just making sure you didn’t fall asleep.”

“I should go,” Shiro says, but he doesn’t move.

Keith gives him a gentle pat.

Shiro eventually gets up and Keith lets him go, but he steals a kiss before he leaves and says, “I won’t go without you. You can tell them that.”

“You’re not supposed to know.”

“Well, I guess you know me well enough to figure that out on your own.”

Shiro tilts his head. “I suppose I do.”

*

They call the paladins downstairs into the hangar where the lions are kept the next afternoon for a meeting to discuss a series of signals the garrison has intercepted during the past couple of days. Keith stays quiet and listens as they’re shown coordinates and places of origin, keeping his eyes on Dr. Holt.

“The Atlas is ready to go?” Allura asks.

“It is,” Coran confirms.

“And who–”

“Shiro will pilot the Atlas,” Coran says before Keith can even finish asking his question.

Keith looks over at Shiro, who’s very persistently not looking back at him. He misses half of the instructions they’re given, because he’s too busy staring down Shiro, who meets his eyes only once for a split-second before he looks away again.

Once they’re dismissed, Shiro stays put while everyone else wanders off, likely to make plans for the evening. Pidge, Hunk and Lance will want to say goodbye to their families. It almost seems strange that they’re leaving with a warning this time. Keith waits with Shirp until it’s just the two of them and the lions.

Shiro nods at the black lion and walks away, Keith at his heels. At first, Keith isn’t sure what he’s doing, but then realizes that Shiro is leading him behind the lion’s paw, where the garrison’s security cameras won’t be able to pick them up.

“So you’re coming,” Keith says.

Shiro nods.

“What did you say to them?”

“Nothing,” Shiro says.

Keith frowns at him, at the agitated look on his face. He remembers last night when Shiro said that this thing between them was a bad idea. “You don’t want to go, do you?”

“I do want to go, but…”

Keith waits for him to go on, but he doesn’t. “But?”

“I don’t know how to be on this mission with you,” Shiro says quietly. “You’re… You said this didn’t have to mean anything, but…”

Keith swallows hard. This is the exact conversation he didn’t know how to have yesterday. “I know,” Keith says. He’s only said two words, but those two words felt like too much, because now Shiro knows and Keith can’t take it back. It feels like he just confessed everything that’s been sitting at the tip off is tongue.

Shiro looks at him for a long moment and takes a deep breath.“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“We’ll be okay.” Keith grabs Shiro by the wrist and gives it a squeeze. He can’t even put into words how scared he is of losing Shiro, but danger has always been part of their jobs and Keith has always felt the safest with Shiro at his side. “I don’t want to be out there without you.”

Shiro reaches for him and pulls him into a hug and Keith holds him as tightly as he can. Shiro has always meant so much to him, but it’s different now and it took him a while to realize. They’ve changed so much, been through so much, and at the other end of it all, maybe they can make this work. Whatever _this_ is.

Keith slowly trails his fingers down Shiro’s cheek and tilts his head up to kiss him. Shiro’s fingers are tangled in his hair a moment later, and Keith pushes against him to get closer to him until they bump into the lion’s leg together. Keith almost wants to apologise, but then Shiro is kissing him again, and Keith’s mind goes blank.

Shiro finally pulls away. “I have to take care of some things,” he says lowly, “but if you want, I can swing by your room later?”

“Yeah,” Keith says and lets go of him, only to lean back in for one more kiss. “I’ll see you later.”

Shiro lingers for another moment, his hand on Keith’s arm, but then nods, mostly to himself, and leaves Keith alone with the lions. Keith has no one to say goodbye to and not a whole lot of things to pack, so he’ll say goodbye to the desert and then he’ll go back to his room to wait for Shiro to slip into bed with him.

Keith pats the black lion’s leg. “We’re going back out there, Black.” They’re going back out there and Shiro will be right by their side. Keith can feel the hum of energy he gets in response in the tips of his fingers and he smiles. “Yeah,” he says, “we’ll be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are very much appreciated :)


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